by Phil Rickman
‘They’re calling it a freak accident.’
‘Freak accident my arse,’ said Gomer. ‘Lucy seen a ewe amblin’ out the hedge, she’d just pull over and wait for the ole thing to get across. This is a country woman, born, bred and what you like, through and through. That woman could sense a sheep from fifty yards. But you try tellin’ that to one o’ these bloody inquests. It’ll be Edgar Powell all over again. Accidental bloody death!’
‘If it wasn’t an accident, what was it?’
‘Suspicious is what it was.’
‘You think somebody killed Lucy?’
‘That’s a wild question,’ Gomer said. ‘But it’s gotter be asked, see. Gotter be asked. En’t nobody else gonner ask it, are they? All right then, it’s n’more than a feelin’. En’t never gonner be no evidence now, coppers’ve made up their minds. Open and shut. Shut for ever, like a lot o’ stuff in this village. But when the wind’s in the right direction ...’
Pulling his tobacco tin from his jacket pocket, Gomer got going furiously on a roll-up.
‘Put it this way, boy. You don’t dig out two thousand cesspits in thirty years without learnin’ what shit smells like. I know the vicar’s taken a few shovel-loads she en’t deservin’ of, and we had a bit of a chat about tonight and ’er says, do me a favour, you go round and talk to Mister Lol Robinson about this and anythin’ else that’s on your mind, give him summat to think about ‘stead o’ worryin’ about the colour of the moon, like.’
‘She said that?’
‘Give or take. So yere I am.’
‘Well’ Lol brought the presentation case of The Wine of Angels into the living room. ‘I’m glad to see you, Gomer. I’ve been sitting here getting nowhere fast.’
‘We can pool what we got, mabbe. I told you that about Lucy, see, ‘cause I know you and ’er was friends ...’
Lol nodded. Point taken. Resolve strengthened. He put down The Wine of Angels box, the only bottles he could find in the house. Gomer sniffed.
‘No thank you, boy. Once was enough.’
‘Looks like a present to Lucy from the festival committee.’
‘Er was mabbe keepin’ it to donate to the Christmas raffle.’
Lol observed that two bottles appeared to have been drunk already.
‘Impossible,’ Gomer said. ‘Nobody’d ever drink a second. Wine of Angels? Balls. Must be fifteen year back, Rod Powell, he calls me in to dig out a couple hundred yards o’ drainage ditch. Well, Edgar’d made a few barrels of Pharisees Red cider, strictly for their own consumption, like, and it was a hot day, see, and they gives me a jugful and, by God, that weren’t the kind o’ cider you forgets. And this’ – Gomer brandished a bottle with some contempt – ‘en’t it.’
‘What is it?’
‘Supermarket cider, boy. Pop. Not quite cheap muck, not far off. This never come out o’ the ole Powell cider house, the Bull cider house as was, I’d stake my JCB on it. They bought this in, knowing poor bloody Cassidy and his flash friends wouldn’t know the difference if it come out of a fancy bottle. Now why they done that?’
‘That’s a mystery,’ Lol said dubiously.
‘Aye.’ Gomer’s glasses gleamed. ‘Another bloody mystery, boy. You might reckon that en’t got nothin’ to do with nothin’. But cider, as Lucy used to say, was the lifeblood of Ledwardine. This is central, boy. Central’
‘I know I’m not thinking too well tonight,’ Lol said, ‘but I don’t see where this is going.’
‘Nor me,’ said Gomer. ‘Not yet. But it all smells off. We looks at things and we draws conclusions and sometimes they’re wrong – like the vicar sees all these coppers movin’ in on the church and she reckons they’re after you. I think there’s summat else afoot, but we’ll have to wait and see, isn’t it?’
‘Except we don’t have time to wait,’ Lol said. ‘Merrily’s playing it by ear in there, Bull-Davies is planning to get it stopped and drive her out of the village for good, and a lot of things are ... closing in, you know?’
‘Ar,’ Gomer said.
They stood there in Lucy’s living room, two little guys in glasses who wanted to help and didn’t know how. Eventually Lol said, ‘You know anything about Wil Williams, Gomer?’
‘Not a lot.’
‘Thomas Traherne?’
‘Know Lucy was keen on the feller. That’s about it.’
Lol looked across at the framed photograph of Lucy and a young, blonde woman feeding a pony from a bucket.
‘Patricia Young?’
Gomer thought for a moment. ‘No.’
‘Susannah Hopton?’
Gomer shook his head.
Lol picked up Mrs Leather, opened it to the handwritten notes on the inside back cover. ‘Hannah Snell?’
‘Ar.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Hannah Snell,’ Gomer said. ‘I know who she is, all right.’ He cleared his throat and began to sing in a tuneless tenor.
‘All ye noble British spirits
That midst dangers glory sought
Let it lessen not your merit
That a woman bravely fought ...’
Gomer beamed. ‘Thought you was some sort o’ folk singer, Lol. You en’t never yeard that? My ole gran used to sing me that as a nipper. Hannah Snell. Bugger me, that takes me back.’
‘Tell me,’ Lol said. ‘Tell me.’
When Gomer had finished, he said, ‘Tell Merrily.’ And ‘Christ.’
James Bull-Davies came almost languidly to his feet.
‘So.’ He leaned forward, both hands on the rim of the prayer-book rack. ‘You’re suggesting my ancestor was, ah ... gay.’
Stefan Alder stood defiantly in front of the pulpit.
‘He was in love with me.’
‘Gord’s sake, man, do we have to have this bloody playacting?’ His voice filled the church. ‘You make accusations about my family, you don’t hide behind bloody Wil Williams. You, Stefan Alder, are saying Thomas Bull was a poofter. Correct?’
‘That’s not a word I would use.’
‘I’m sorry. A homosexual. This man with four children.’
‘It doesn’t make any difference. You must know that.’
‘But that’s what you’re alleging. Come on, man, you can’t libel the dead, spit it out.’
‘All right. I believe that Tom Bull had a physical relationship with the Priest of Ledwardine and when there was a danger that it would become a matter of general knowledge in the village, in his family, in the courts where he presided, he sought to have Wil condemned as a witch. He had a neighbouring farmer accuse Wil of diminishing the productivity of his orchard. He had a local artisan who was dependent on his patronage invent a story about him dancing with sprites, or even ...’
Stefan glanced around his silent congregation.
‘Don’t stop, Alder,’ Bull-Davies said. ‘We’re all agog.’
‘... or even paid some of the local youths to disport themselves naked in the orchard to torment poor Wil beyond his powers of endurance.’
Murmurs of disbelief and disapproval, mostly from the northern aisle.
Bull-Davies sighed. ‘Went to an awful lot of trouble, didn’t he?’
Stefan had been too long in the light. His hair was damp and darkened, his shirt hung limp and grey with sweat.
‘What I find most objectionable, is your slur on the integrity of the man.’
‘You don’t understand.’ Stefan’s face streamed. He refused to move out of the light. ‘I do think Tom believed in what he was doing. He convinced himself that Wil Williams had occult powers. How else could he, a Bull, possibly fall in love with a man? Unless that man had bewitched him.’
A hush. Merrily saw James’s hands tighten on the prayerbook shelf of the Bull family pew. Very slowly, James straightened up and walked out of the pew and into the well below the pulpit, stopping two yards from Stefan Alder.
‘And on what,’ he said, with a clear menace, ‘do you base your evidence?’
Stefan didn’t move
. ‘He kept a journal, did he not?’
‘And you, of course, have seen this journal?’
‘You know I cannot possibly have seen it, as your family keeps it in a bank vault in Hereford.’
Murmurs in the pews.
‘And unless and until you are prepared to produce this journal, you’re in no position even to pretend to refute any of what I’ve said. Are you?’
James said confidently, ‘There is no journal relating to your spurious allegations in any bank vault, to my knowledge, in Hereford or anywhere else.’
They faced one another at the end of the tunnel of light, James heavy in tweeds making Stefan look even more pale and fragile. Somebody should stop the fight, Merrily thought absurdly.
‘So you’ve taken it out of the bank, have you?’
Stefan stared into James’s eyes, his body arching towards the big soldier, his hands weaving in the light in an almost womanly distress. When he spoke again it was in a soft, imploring voice.
‘Please tell us the truth, James ... Please don’t hold back any more ... You know that Tom, before he died, made a confession to the then priest, together with an enormous donation to the church in order that his body might lie where it lies now – behind me – in the area between the altar and the orchard where his beloved Wil lay, in unhallowed ground; a man who took his own life rather than face conviction for the crime of being gay. Conviction – and betrayal – at the hands of a dishonest man and a false lover, who—’
‘You ... little ... shit ...’ With a roar James was on him and the church exploded into light. Some women on the left screamed, men in the centre were on their feet.
Blinded by the glare, Merrily threw both hands up to her eyes and through the fingers saw figures converging on the threshing bodies below the rood screen. She stumbled down the aisle towards them, aware of Annie Howe striding in front of her. Scrambling up the steps under the chancel arch she saw policemen holding back Bull-Davies and Stefan Alder, and she filled her lungs and screamed out, ‘In the name of God, stop this!’
And for a moment, there was quiet.
Annie Howe looked up at Merrily and smiled pleasantly. ‘Thank you, Ms Watkins.’
The two detectives holding James Bull-Davies let him go and James stepped away from them, brushed down his jacket and straightened up and stood quite stiffly, looking directly across the nave at nobody.
The detective holding Stefan did not let him go. It was Mumford. Stefan sullenly tossed his head back against Mumford’s shoulder. Mumford went rigid. Annie Howe said, ‘Bernard Stephen Alderson, I’m arresting you for the murder of Richard Coffey. You don’t have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you fail to mention —’
The rest was lost in the tumult.
Merrily closed her eyes.
48
Thank You, Lord
FULL OF BREATHLESS excitement and bad, gassy cider, Jane looked up.
Looked up in hope and then began to scream. The figure rearing up in the clearing, the shape hiding the moon was not Colette. Was far too big to be Colette.
She shrank back against the Apple Tree Man, let go of the neck of The Wine of Angels, the bottle rolling away, sloshing cider over her jeans. Her lips went soggy and a whimper began in her throat. Please, she was trying to say. Please, I’m drunk.
The figure didn’t move. If it was the police, there’d have been a powerful torchbeam in her face. She was pushing herself back so hard that a spiky piece of bark was stabbing into the top of her head, the pain brutally assuring her that this was not a dream.
‘Jane Watkins.’ The voice was sorrowful. And male. And local.
‘Oh God,’ Jane said. Her head was all fogged up. She knew the voice, couldn’t identify it.
‘What you doing yere, Jane Watkins?’
Whoever it was, he knew the orchard too well to need a torch.
‘This is not in the best of taste, I’d say.’
‘Oh God!’ Jane sat up. ‘It’s you.’ The last time they’d met, she’d rushed up to him in a panic in the market place, and he’d put his big hands on her shoulders and said yes, all right, he’d go into the orchard after Colette and see what he could do, and his eyes had looked sort of rangy and fearless under his Paul Weller fringe, but even then she hadn’t held out any great hopes of everything being all right.
‘Two things,’ Lloyd Powell said. ‘One, you’re too young to be drinking that ole pop. Two, this is where my grandfather died and if he’s looking down now he’s gonner be disgusted, he is.’
‘Sorry, Lloyd. I really didn’t mean to be disrespectful’
‘I thought better of you, I really did, young lady. But you en’t such a lady, after all, are you? Look at you ... You stink of it. Disgraceful’
‘I let the bottle go and it all came out.’
She struggled to her feet, stumbling about a bit, which she hadn’t expected; The Wine of Angels had been so foul she hadn’t really thought it would have any effect.
‘I dunno at all,’ Lloyd said. ‘Just look at the state of you.’
Jane gritted her teeth. He might look cool and hunky, but he was just like his dad, all strait-laced and backbone of the community and no sense of humour at all.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘I don’t hear an explanation.’
Oh sure. Well, actually, Lloyd I was conducting a mystical experiment, on the lines indicated by Mrs Leather, to try and bring Colette back from the Land of Faerie, which isn’t as stupid as it sounds, if people like you had ever taken the trouble to listen to Miss Devenish, we’re simply talking about a parallel dimension, and I know it exists because I think I’ve been there, although I don’t remember a thing, it was a kind of trance state, and all right, it was a long shot, but ...
Oh, sure.
‘Come on, Jane. We better get you back to your mother before something happens to you.’
Jane stood up straight. Well, almost. She pushed her hair back behind her ears, bits of bark and stuff dropping out.
‘I can get myself back, thank you.’
‘Oh aye? And how am I gonner feel, something happens to you or you goes off like your friend? Though heaven only knows why a decent girl would want a friend like that. Looking at you now, mind, I’m not sure you’re a decent girl after all.’
Jane dragged an angry breath between her closed teeth. You could only stand so much of this. ‘Look. I’m sorry for trespassing in your precious orchard. I’m sorry for resting under your grandad’s tree. And, most of all, I’m sorry for drinking your disgusting cider. I shall go.’
‘And I said ...’ Lloyd stood up right in front of her, about a foot taller and nearly twice as heavy, ‘that I will take you home, miss. Come on. Pick up that bottle – litter, that is.’
‘I wasn’t going to leave it. I care for the countryside.’
‘Oh aye,’ Lloyd said. ‘All you incomers care for the country.’
‘And all you farmers are just so smug. You always think that whatever you do’s got to be right because you’ve been doing it for centuries or whatever.’
Jane bent and picked up the bottle. There was another one somewhere, but what would he think if he saw she’d brought two of the things? Probably that she was expecting a bloke. She stuck the empty bottle under her arm and turned back towards the church. But Lloyd was in front of her again, spreading out his long arms like an official police barrier.
‘No, you don’t. Not that way, Miss Watkins. Got my truck over the other side, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, that’s stupid! It’s only a few minutes’ walk back to the churchyard.’
‘You’re going back in the truck and that’s final. I wanner keep my eye on you, make sure you goes in the right door.’
She was furious. But she was also a bit drunk. Damn Lloyd Powell. Damn Lloyd and damn Rod and damn bloody old Edgar who was too gaga to point his gun in the right direction.
Feeling really sullen, sickeningly bloody teenage, she let Lloyd steer her out of the clearing
in the opposite direction to the way she’d come in, towards the farm entrance to the orchard which was out near the ‘new’ road. She noticed he never touched her, just put out his arms like barriers. The Powells were such puritans. Or could it even be that it was like with Lol, and Lloyd was afraid of teenage girls? Guys could be so strange.
‘I didn’t think there’d be anybody around tonight,’ she said when they picked up the rough path through the apple trees, still floury with yellowing blossom against the treacly sky. ‘I thought you’d be in church with everybody else.’
Lloyd snorted. With an unexpected venom, he said, ‘Why’d I wanner to listen to the ramblings of some poncy, posing little queer who thinks he can rewrite other people’s history?’
It wasn’t clear whether he was talking about Stefan or Richard Coffey. Nothing was too clear, actually. She’d deliberately drunk too much, hoping to disconnect her mind, and she’d succeeded. Hazey Jane again.
‘We supposed to sit around and allow that?’
‘It’s only a play, Lloyd. Nobody’s saying it’s true.’
‘En’t they?’
‘No.’
‘All you know, miss. All you know.’
As they emerged, quite suddenly, at the roadside, Jane said, resentfully, ‘You’d be surprised what I know.’
Lloyd stopped. His famous white truck was parked by the kerb without lights. He got out his keys, unlocked the passenger door. ‘All right.’ There was a kind of resignation in his voice. He held open the door. ‘You better get in.’
Standing on the footplate, hauling herself up, she got dizzy, stumbled again and clutched at the side-panel to stop herself falling off.
In the back of the truck, the pink moon shone out of dead eyes.
Mumford and his colleague took Stefan away. Nobody in the church attempted to follow them except for Annie Howe. Merrily caught her arm as she walked down from the chancel.
‘Excuse me, Inspector. Do I have to disturb the bishop and ask him to disturb the Chief Constable or do I get to hear an explanation?’
Annie Howe half-turned in irritation. And then – the woman of the hour who could afford to be magnanimous – she relaxed, comfortably resigned.